June 24th -- Road Atlanta!

Road Atlanta (about 45 minutes north of the city) invited all Corvettes to come for barbeque and laps on their terrific 2.5 mile road course this afternoon! And more than 150 cars showed up.

We queued up on the entrance ramp to the track, four-wide starting at about 3pm this afternoon.

Once that ramp was filled, another staging area was created in an adjacent parking lot.

We hung out, admired each other's rides..

.. not the least of which is Don Panoz' (owner of Road Atlanta and founder of the American Le Mans Series) own 1953 Corvette:

We talked cars and caravans and sweated (it was HOT!) until dinner was served about 6pm. The food was great and, as always, all us Corvette fanatics were fun to be with.

Vicki Hicks (our GA Caravan co-chairman) had asked that we all wear red because the Speed Channel was coming..

.. to take pictures for a later broadcast. And nearly everyone did wear red.

Mike Swaine, President and General Manager of Road Atlanta..

.. welcomed us and announced that Chevrolet is now a major sponsor of racing at the track:

This weekend is the Chevy Grand Prix of Atlanta (which, sadly, we will all miss because of the 50th Celebration). In recognition of the role that Chevy and Corvette are playing this year, Mike announced that for all racing events at Road Atlanta for the entire year, parking passes would no longer be required for any Corvette; your Corvette IS your parking pass at Road Atlanta in 2003! Great news, and a great cheer went up! We'll all be back for sure for the ALMS Petit Le Mans this fall!

Ron Fellows..

.. and Johnny O'Connell..

.. (C5R race drivers fresh from a podium finish @ Le Mans) were there to sign just about anything presented to them. There was quite a line:

At about 7:30P the P.A. announcer told us it was time to head for the cars:

We had no idea how this was going to work and how many laps we'd be given. It was great to see the line of 150+ Corvettes of all five generations strung out on this great racecourse:

One of the great things about Road Atlanta is the change in elevation all along the track. In fact, coming under the Suzuki bridge into the home straight the track drops 115 feet in a very short distance. Cool! To our joy, we were given THREE laps of the track -- and, best of all, we were "allowed" to do some of it at speed. Well, opportunity came up through some inadvertent "rubber-banding" -- but it was glorious all the same!

All in all a great afternoon of fun with cars -- our Corvettes!

And tomorrow, Atlanta Motor Speedway, the hook-up with the Florida Caravan -- and

HOT LAPS!!!!!!

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